Explore "Saints and Sinners" by Lawrence Wright on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"You have been sued," the citation said. I stood in my doorway looking dumbly at the constable who had just handed me the document. "Wait a minute," I heard my wife say in the background. "Let me get the camera."
Cause number 475,798 in the state of Texas, in the district court of Travis County, was Madalyn O'Hair, plaintiff (described as "the leading proponent, educator and spokesperson for Atheism in the World"), vs. Texas Monthly, Inc.; Gregory Curtis, editor; and Lawrence Wright, writer. Often I had thumbed through complaints that looked exactly like this one, but there were always other people's names attached, not my own. Now, as I tried to read the legal language, the words wouldn't penetrate; they seemed to have lost all meaning. It was like trying to hold mercury in my hands. I turned to the end to see the amount of damages she was asking. Nine million dollars.